LOS ANGELES – Thousands of Kaiser healthcare employees in California are being asked to switch unions in a bitter year-long battle pitting one of the nation’s largest unions against an upstart rival.
If approved, the vote would be the largest by private-sector workers since the United Auto Workers cast their ballots in 1941 to unionize at the Ford Motor Company.
A petition has been filed in Los Angeles asking the National Labor Relations Board to allow new elections for 45,000 members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), whose United Healthcare Workers branch took over Kaiser’s local union last year. The workers are being asked to switch their allegiance to the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), which was formed in the wake of SEIU’s takeover by former executives who were removed from the union and are now being sued by the SEIU.
The NLRB is expected to decide whether an election should be held and schedule it within 45 days, according to a spokesperson. Most of the workers affected are members of a Kaiser union that includes medical assistants, respiratory therapists, housekeepers and medical records clerks.
“We worked for decades to make Kaiser jobs good, stable jobs that paid enough so people in our communities could support their families,” said Robert Hernandez, a materials management clerk at Kaiser Baldwin Park for 20 years. “Since SEIU officials took over our union, Kaiser has announced layoffs, cut benefits, and started turning good jobs into contingent positions. We're ready to put healthcare workers back in charge of our union.”
NUHW members say the Washington, D.C.-based SEIU, which boasts 2.2 million members – 1 million of which are in healthcare – replaced thousands of local caregivers in elected positions with their own people and has been more concerned with securing power than representing the union’s rank-and-file. In contrast, they point to the NUHW, which was been credited with winning 171 new positions at Kaiser’s flagship Los Angeles hospital.
“To provide the best care for patients, there has to be a balance of power between healthcare workers and healthcare corporations,” said Sal Rosselli, interim president of NUHW. “For decades, the voice of Kaiser workers made Kaiser not just the best place to work, but the best place to receive care. We want to restore that balance.”
The petition comes less than a week after Kaiser’s SEIU members ratified a new contract calling for 9 percent pay raises over the next 27 months.
“The NUHW petition, if the National Labor Relations Board agrees it was filed appropriately, could force an election between SEIU-UHW and NUHW at Kaiser. Voting for NUHW would risk all the gains SEIU-UHW members made in a hard-fought four-month contract campaign against takeaways by Kaiser,” an SEIU press release offered.
The two unions have been at odds for most of the year. NUHW leaders cried foul recently when union workers at Saint Louise Regional Hospital voted to reject the NUHW in favor of the SEIU-UHW. Earlier, officials at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital filed challenges after about 700 union members voted last December to join the NUHW over the SEIU-UHW.
Earlier this month, a federal judge in San Francisco reaffirmed an April court ruling awarding $1.57 million in damages to SEIU from Rosselli and 15 other former SEIU members who allegedly sought to sabotage the union while launching the NUHW. Rosselli and other top officials were removed from their SEIU-UHW offices on Jan. 27, 2009, on charges of misusing millions in members’ dues and violating member’s democratic rights. They formed the NUHW the following day.
“First they tried to secretly undermine and harm the union members they were sworn to represent and protect. Then, when they got caught, they tried to weasel out of paying for what they did to us,” said Richard Cruz, a financial counselor at Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa, Calif., following the ruling by U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup.
Rosselli and others in the NUHW leadership have been on the losing end of at least three court rulings dealing with their battle with SEIU. In May, Rosselli and four assistants were removed from a $22 million SEIU-UHW union education fund after Alsup ruled that their involvement in the fund was “drenched in self-dealing.” And this month, the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board charged Rosselli and his assistants with several indiscretions, including failing to handle grievances, canceling contracts, stealing and destroying documents, threatening and intimidating staff, and funneling union money into a private account, while they were with SEIU-UHW.
